>Whereas if you're comparing the 1970s construction costs to the modern day operating costs to imply that the operating costs are high, that's obviously not a useful comparison to begin with.

If we learn that even if we make new nuclear as cheap as old nuclear, it's is still not cheap enough, surely it is a very useful comparison?

It's not useful if the goal is to defend nuclear at all costs, I'll give you that, but that's not a worthy goal.

>And then the question is, what's the most economical way to get those things?

Absolutely, and that's why finding out the real, actual truth of the costs is very important.

If you add the true cost to society from things like Sellafield, Asse II, the interest-free loans, the army personnel and national labs handling waste, the decades of countermeasures for Chernobyl in dozens of countries and so on - if you add upp all that, perhaps generating e-fuel is actually cheaper than nuclear?

If not already, the Chinese have taught us that once you get the wheels rolling, prices decimate pretty rapidly. They made solar and batteries viable, maybe we could do e-fuels?

Synthetic fuel, batteries everywhere, pumped storage, geothermal, gravity, pressurized air, heated salt - maybe all of those are actually cheaper than nuclear, if we really add up ALL the costs of nuclear?